After the Runway: Finding Body Positivity in a Post-Victoria’s Secret World
*** Trigger Warning: This article discusses eating disorders, body image, and disordered eating behaviors, which may be distressing to some readers. ***
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Every year, the return of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show brings glitter, glamour and a flood of conversation about beauty. The runway may have changed, now featuring more diversity, more shapes, and more voices but for many girls watching at home, the feeling remains complicated. The tall, sculpted bodies, the glossy hair, the endless legs; they can still spark something sharp and heavy inside. You start to look in the mirror a little longer. Maybe skip dinner. Maybe think that confidence only comes in one body type.
It’s not always about wanting to be a model, it’s about wanting to feel “enough” in a world that’s constantly telling you that you’re not. That’s where the conversation around body positivity feels more urgent than ever.
We tell ourselves that things have changed that we’re in an era of body positivity and self-love, but deep down, it’s more complicated than that. Scroll through social media and you’ll see endless posts about wellness, “clean” eating, and Pilates routines that promise to sculpt your best self. It all sounds healthy, but beneath that glossy surface lies a quieter pressure: to be thin, toned, and disciplined in a way that often doesn’t feel freeing at all.
In truth, the early 2000s “thinspiration” aesthetic is creeping back, just disguised as “health.” It’s making a lot of women, even in 2025, feel like they’re not doing enough not eating right enough, not working out enough, not looking soft enough or sharp enough. It’s as if beauty keeps shapeshifting, but the pressure remains the same.
When Health Becomes a Mask for Control
There is a fine line between wanting to be healthy and wanting to be perfect. At first, the desire to take care of yourself feels empowering: counting steps, watching what you eat, pushing through workouts. You get that rush of pride, a small thrill of control. But slowly, it stops being about care. It becomes about rules.
You start skipping meals not because you are full, but because you are afraid of what food might do to your body. You exercise to erase guilt, not to feel good. Compliments about looking “fit” become addictive, each one a small reward that keeps you chasing more. Then, without realising it, your worth becomes tangled up in your reflection.
This cycle rarely comes from vanity. It often comes from fear: fear of losing control, of not being loved, of not fitting into a world that glorifies thinness as beauty. Control feels safe, but it is a fragile kind of safety. When your body begins to protest, when exhaustion sets in, when your hair dulls and your laughter fades, you start to see how much joy has been traded for the illusion of being “better”.
What makes this even harder is the quiet isolation that comes with it. There is an invisible wall that builds up between you and the rest of the world. You want to protect yourself, but end up feeling more alone. You stop talking about what is really happening because you are afraid people will not understand. The truth is, you are not weak or vain. You are scared. You are trying to control something that feels uncontrollable.
For anyone who has ever struggled with body image, that fear feels familiar. It starts with habits that seem harmless: skipping breakfast, staying longer at the gym, scrolling through perfect bodies online. Compliments become validation, and validation becomes a drug. The more approval you get, the more you crave it. Somewhere in that loop, the joy of being alive is replaced by the exhausting chase to look “enough”.
When “Healthy” Turns Harmful
It often begins so quietly that you barely notice it. At first, it feels like you are doing something good for yourself, choosing salads over chips, running that extra mile, feeling the small rush of discipline. There is a sense of pride that comes from control, from believing you are finally mastering your body. But slowly, that control starts to control you.
What once felt empowering becomes restrictive. You start eating less, pushing harder, checking mirrors, counting numbers on a scale. Compliments about looking “fit” or “toned” begin to feel like validation, and you start chasing them, not because they make you happy, but because they silence the fear of not being enough.
There is a quiet tragedy in how easily the pursuit of health can turn into self-punishment. It stops being about care and starts being about fear, the fear of losing control, of falling behind, of not being loved in the body you already have.
Then one day, your body begins to protest. You feel tired all the time, your hair loses its shine, your mood dulls, and laughter feels distant. It is in that moment you realise how harshly you have treated yourself in the name of self-improvement.
The truth is, your body was never the problem. It was only asking for kindness, rest and understanding all along.
The Role of Media and Perfection
It is impossible to talk about body image without mentioning the influence of media. For so many of us, it begins with the people we look up to online, the YouTubers sharing their workout routines, the influencers showing “what I eat in a day”, the perfect lighting, the perfect skin, the perfect angles. You watch them and think, if I just try harder, maybe I can look like that too.
There was a time when the Victoria’s Secret Angels set the gold standard of beauty such as long legs, flat stomachs and impossibly perfect proportions. Now, the image has simply evolved. It’s no longer just glossy magazine covers but the endless scroll of social media. The ideal woman now drinks green smoothies, does Pilates, wears minimal makeup, and somehow manages to look flawless while claiming to be “that girl” by “just being herself”.
It is not that any of these things are wrong. Loving fitness, eating well, or caring about appearance are not harmful in themselves. The problem lies in the quiet pressure behind them, the message that you must constantly be improving to be worthy. Even the so-called “body positive” spaces often reward a very specific kind of beauty like toned but not too muscular, curvy but in the “right” places, confident but never messy.
It’s a strange kind of perfection, one that hides behind hashtags like #fitspo and #selflove. It looks attainable, yet it is as curated and filtered as the airbrushed campaigns we thought we left behind.
The danger is subtle. You begin to measure your own happiness against a stranger’s highlight reel. You tell yourself it is about motivation, but somewhere deep down, you start to feel like you are failing at self-love. You start to believe that if you were just a little more disciplined, a little more grateful, a little more perfect, you would finally be enough.
But body positivity was never meant to be a performance. It was never about posing confidently in front of a mirror or preaching self-acceptance while quietly criticising yourself. It is about kindness, patience, and the courage to exist in a body that changes and still believe it deserves care.
True beauty does not come from meeting a standard. It comes from the peace of knowing you are more than your reflection. That your worth is not something to earn, but something you already have.
Healing and Reclaiming Control
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Recovery begins with the understanding that the problem was never your fault, but healing is your choice. It starts with small moments of hope, like eating without guilt, wearing what you love, and feeling free in your own body again. Real health is not about control or perfection, but about living fully and treating your body with care rather than punishment.
Support often begins quietly too. It might be a conversation with a friend, a few words in a journal, or the decision to ask for help. Healing is not about shouting your progress to the world; it is about finding one safe space where you can finally breathe. Movement becomes joy again through walking, stretching or dancing, not to change your body but to feel at home in it.
Over time, the noise softens. You start to eat because you are hungry, not because you have earned it. You begin dressing for yourself, not for others. True confidence is not constant self-love, but gentleness: understanding that your body is not a project to fix, but a home to care for.
Living in a Body You Love
A healthy relationship with your body is a kind of freedom. It means being able to eat what you love without guilt, to trust your body and to treat it with kindness. True health is not found in restriction or punishment, but in nourishment, balance and care. When you begin to feed yourself properly, your skin glows, you laugh more easily and you sleep more peacefully. That is what real beauty looks like: the quiet, effortless glow that comes from within.
Over time, you begin to realise that beauty has never lived in symmetry, perfection or size. It lives in small, ordinary moments, in laughter shared with friends, in walks under the sun and in the joy of eating something you love without shame. The healthiest version of yourself is not the one that looks the thinnest, but the one that feels at peace. It is the version that eats real food, rests when tired and stops apologising for simply existing.
That is where the real glow comes from, not from filters or validation, but from the calm confidence that shines through your smile, your energy and your presence. As Bella Hadid once said, “Gratitude can change everything.” And she is right. The moment you start thanking your body for what it does instead of criticising how it looks, something inside you changes. You realise your legs carry you through life, your heart works tirelessly every day and your body wakes up for you each morning. Suddenly, the idea of hating it feels like such a waste.
Where We Go from Here
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The real meaning of body positivity in 2025 may not be about constant celebration, but about unlearning. It is about letting go of the belief that we must earn our worth through appearance or how “healthy” we seem. Self-love has become an image in itself, often shown through candles, affirmations and face masks, but sometimes it is far simpler. Sometimes self-love looks like eating a proper meal, saying “I’m tired”, turning away from the mirror or forgiving yourself for being human.
The return of the Victoria’s Secret show has reignited conversations around beauty and body image, but perhaps that is not entirely bad. It reminds us that there is still work to do, that real confidence grows slowly, through patience and kindness rather than perfection. In the end, your body is not a trend. It is your home, and the only beauty worth pursuing is the kind that allows you to live freely and fully within it.
True body confidence is not about loving every part of yourself every single day, but about respect. It is a quiet promise to never treat yourself with cruelty again. Confidence is not built in front of a mirror but in the small moments when you choose peace over punishment and self-compassion over comparison.
To any girl who’s reading this, who feels trapped in that same loop of striving and shame, the message is simple: you are loved, and you are enough. There is a version of you who eats freely, laughs loudly and lives joyfully, and she is still there, waiting for you to let her in.